A year or so back, when Denzel Washington got through his directorial debut, Antwone Fisher, he knew a few things about whatever he did next: he wouldn't direct it and it wouldn't be too cerebral. He was up for a little adrenaline-pumping fun in the sun.

So how about the Florida Keys, a gorgeous wife, a beautiful mistress and a wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts that would have made Peter Allen proud?

That is, more or less, what he signed up for in that next project, Out of Time.

There are also free-falls from hotel balconies, car chases through palm-fringed streets and a bag full of missing drug money.

Thus, it's more Miami Vice than Scarface. Fortunately, Washington comes with the guarantee that probably anything featuring his handsome mug - even a movie chosen for its low-impact emotional demands - is going to play better than the season finale of a 1980s cops-and-robbers frolic. He does have a pair of Oscars, after all.

"What I liked about it was that it was more story-driven than character-driven," he says.

"I wanted to relax. But you know what? It was pretty hard work, because shooting in Miami in summer sure helps get that sweaty, fevered look that I guess Carl wanted."

Carl is director Carl Franklin, who might be the other reason the $US50 million ($64.4 million) noir thriller unspools a tad more freshly than a TV confection.

Washington and Franklin previously collaborated on the terrific 1995 murder-mystery Devil in a Blue Dress, which was set in post-World War II Los Angeles and adapted from a Walter Mosley novel.

Like his Devil character, "Easy" Rawlins, Washington's Out of Time persona is a detective, although this time he's an actual cop, not a private sleuth. In the great noir tradition, his police-chief-in-paradise is the hero who may not be guilty, but is not exactly innocent, either.

"When I read the script and made my notes, the word I wrote at the top of the page was 'temptation'," says Washington. "That was the arc of the character.

"This was a guy who was like a big fish in a little pond. He had just had this big drug bust and his ego led him to think he could get away with more than he should have.

"Essentially, he is sleeping with another man's wife and there are consequences when you do things like that."

The object of the chief's extramarital affection is the luscious and troubled Ann Merai (Sanaa Lathan). When it turns out that his lover has been stricken with cancer, he's ready to do anything, even if it means misappropriating a big fat bag of confiscated drug money he's holding as evidence.

The chief isn't stealing the cash, just borrowing it. Since he's doing it to help save a life, who could blame him?

Additionally, this being a noir thriller, everything gets absurdly complicated. The Feds want the drug money now, while the chief's semi-estranged wife and fellow detective Alex (played to sultry perfection by Eva Mendes) is hot on the trail of clues leading back to the chief. So when the chief isn't trying to track down the real culprits, he's snatching faxes off the office Fujitsu before his missus can get a peek.

Mendes is the Texas-born beauty of Cuban descent last seen in 2 Fast 2 Furious. She is something of the new Latin It-girl. (Hasta la vista, J. Lo.)

In the Farrelly brothers' latest gross-out comedy, Stuck on You, she plays April, an actress-model who lives next door to Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear's Siamese twins. The type who knows more about plastic surgery than brain surgery, she is impressed when she sees the guys around the pool, literally joined at the hip: "Wow! Where did you get that done?"

But Mendes, 29, seems to be more into law enforcement tough-mindedness than Valley-Girl cluelessness. She also stars in Robert Rodriguez's upcoming Once Upon a Time in Mexico as a US agent undercover in Mexico.

"April was a lot of fun to do, even if she spends a lot of time in a bikini," says Mendes.

"Out of Time was gruelling and great because it was the second time I'd been in a film with Denzel. I had this tiny role in Training Day. This time I'm married to him, which is a big leap forward."